In times of crisis, we see who we really are. In the past few weeks, we have seen the best of our country on display as millions sacrifice to keep each other safe. College students have returned home to the extent they are able. Much of the workforce has similarly shifted online. Healthcare and emergency workers have risked their lives to care for those in need and to ensure our ability to stay safely at home.

Three weeks and a pandemic ago, Bojan Lazarevic ’20 kept a regimented daily checklist. Do my fruit flies have enough food in their vials? Is their food too dry? Too wet? Are the flies healthy? Are they laying eggs?

A recent study on the stability of the virus that causes COVID-19, coauthored by Dylan Morris GS, in the Ecological and Evolutionary Biology department, reveals that the virus can be stable for hours to days on surfaces and in aerosols.

During their second virtual meeting on March 28, members of the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) discussed the logistics of the upcoming U-Councilor and Class Officer elections and brainstormed ideas for virtual community building.

On Saturday, March 28, the Princeton Health Department (PHD) informed residents that a Princeton police officer has tested positive for COVID-19. A second announcement followed on Sunday, revealing that a second police officer also tested positive for the virus. Currently, one more officer is awaiting test results.

The first week of quarantine was blissful. After discovering unheard-of quantities of free time — a commodity for any Princetonian — I decided to make myself busy. Amidst a flurry of online courses and new projects, I decided to get back into the daily yoga routine I’d abandoned freshman year, pick up three new languages (two of which I, admittedly, already had a background in), read a book a day, and relax in the evening with the Metropolitan Opera’s nightly livestream. For the eternal overachiever like myself, quarantine was heaven: I finally had the time for all of the interests I had neglected for most of my Princeton career.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to reckon with deep structural problems in our society, such as global climate change and economic injustice. To rectify those problems, we need to recognize that all of us hold responsibility for both these problems and their solutions.

According to a report released by the USG Committee on Student Housing and independent statistical analysis conducted by Yang Song ’20, this year’s undergraduate room draw order was randomized properly.

The University will add the pass/D/fail (PDF) option to all undergraduate courses, according to an announcement from Dean of the College Jill Dolan. Decisions to move individual classes to PDF-only will be made on a course-by-course basis.

In the past week, students have been gradually finding out which classes they can take for a grade and which classes they cannot — whether by Blackboard post, email, or casual mention over Zoom. Some are still waiting on concrete answers.

At 7 p.m. EST on March 26, the University announced that it has offered admission to 1,823 students for the class of 2024, from a pool of 32,836 applicants — representing a 5.55 percent acceptance rate. The 1,032 regular decision acceptances supplement the 791 Single-Choice Early Action (SECA) acceptances that the University released on Dec. 12, 2019.

Funnily enough, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought some unexpected, if short-lived, news. Global carbon emissions have fallen (China’s by as much as 25 percent), toxic air pollution has declined in cities around the world, and places like the Venice Canal, which typically suffer from overcrowding and water pollution, are running clear and teeming with aquatic life. As governments move to shut down industrial and commercial activity, the environment appears to be benefitting.

The coronavirus has escalated to the point where it affects every single aspect of life. That’s not news, by now. For Princeton students, virus prevention measures have booted most of us from campus and forced all of us to attend class virtually. Consequently, the grading system for many classes has changed.

On March 11, Dean of the College Jill Dolan notified undergraduates that they had eight days to pack up their dorm rooms, return home, and stay there. Only students who met the “strictest criteria” of need would be exempt.

I had forgotten the joy I received from checking out books from the library. When I was in kindergarten, we were only allowed to take one book from the school library each time my class went, and we were only able to take the book from the library to the classroom. When my teacher announced sometime in January of that year that we would now be allowed to take our library books home, I was thrilled. I was at that school until eighth grade, and as the years went by, the library rules relaxed around things such as the number of books we could check out at once. And I took advantage of that library as much as I possibly could. Yet something changed when I arrived at my high school. The first time I tried to check out a book from my high school’s library, I wasn’t able to do so because I wasn’t yet in the system. As coursework and extracurriculars took center stage in my life, I never really returned to the library — at least not to check out a book. It also didn’t help that everything at my high school was either online or had to be purchased.

Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow announced that he and his wife had tested positive for COVID-19, in an email sent yesterday to Harvard affiliates. Community members from all eight universities in the Ivy League have tested positive for the virus.

Jianing Zhao ’20 had a busy spring ahead of her. She was directing two shows slated for production in the coming weeks: her original adaptation of the Chinese novel “Lust, Caution” with Princeton Chinese Theater and a participatory, site-specific production of Eugène Ionesco’s “The Chairs,” in collaboration with the French theater workshop L’Avant Scene. “The Chairs” was to be Zhao’s senior project with the Program in Theater.

All around us, state and local governments are taking measures to slow the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic. Schools are shutting down, leaving millions of children in the hands of parents for whom childcare, in the age of social distancing, is no longer an option. Small businesses are shuttered, straining our national economy.